A PROPOSED SOLUTION TO THE PRESENT IMPASSE IN WASHINGTON D.C.
How the Debt Ceiling Gets Raised and The Biden Agenda Infrastructure Bills Get Passed
Biden’s big $3.5 trillion-over-10-years ‘Build Back Better” (BBB) bill, called the “Caring Infrastructure” bill by progressive Democrats is all about taking credit for things their voters approve of, avoiding voter ire and pinning failure on opponents, posturing to win the 2022 and 2024 elections and beyond. These three elements are fundamental calculations of any congressional vote.
Obstructive Republicans want to take credit for killing the BBB, thereby avoiding the bill’s tax increases on their big-bucks donors, under the guise of being “fiscally responsible.” They also want to avoid the ire of their hard-core base they have persuaded that any such programs are -- horrors! -- “socialism,” “communism” or “Marxism” while pinning the failure to pass legislation Democrat voters want on the Biden administration, which they can then denigrate as inept and overreaching. If by some chance, the Democrats succeed in passing a 10-year-BBB bill, Republicans, expecting to win in 2024, don’t want to be saddled with it, or to be held responsible for cutting its popular programs that extend into what they expect to be their administration. By filibustering the raising of the debt ceiling, the Republicans want the Democrats to expend this year’s one remaining budget-reconciliation bullet on passing the debt ceiling bill, leaving the Build Back Better social spending bill to the tender mercies of another Republican filibuster. Got to give the devil his due: it’s bare-knuckles-politics skillfully played.
Progressives want to take credit for passing programs popular with their voters, thereby avoiding their ire. They want to pin a potential failure to pass the bill on “obstruction-minded, uncaring, hypocritical” Republicans and/or the recalcitrant Manchin and Sinema.
Recalcitrant Manchin and Sinema want to take credit for being fiscally responsible, limiting the bill to $1.5-$2 Trillion, while avoiding their voters ire they would incur by itemizing popular programs they would cut. So they refuse to itemize, leaving the progressives to take the blame for such cuts made to meet Manchin’s and Sinema’s arbitrary ceiling. Both senators have conflicts of interests: Manchin is reluctant to vote for climate change amelioration provisions in the BBB bill opposed by his fossil-fuel-industry donors, not to mention his $500,000/year income from brokering coal in its most polluting form. Sinema is similarly reluctant to oppose to the BBB’s tax increases her big donors would be forced to pay if the BBB passes in its present form.
In choosing a 10-year horizon Biden wants to take credit for signing a “permanent-solution” bill popular with his constituents extending over what he hopes will be a Democratic administration elected in 2024 and beyond. Passing popular legislation avoids voter ire if the legislation fails. If it fails, Biden wants to pin the blame for failure on “heartless, cruel and obstructionist” Republicans.
Both parties want to take credit for passing the popular and necessary smaller bipartisan infrastructure bill. If it should not pass they want to pin the blame on progressive House Democrats’ obstruction.
Progressive House Democrats want to take credit for passing and avoid blame for failing to pass their popular BBB bill (injudiciously described as a $3.5 trillion rather than a $350 billion-a-year-10-year bill). So progressives in the House refuse to pass the smaller bipartisan bill without prior guaranteed passage of their BBB, “caring infrastructure” bill, currently stymied by the Republican filibusters. (See above.)
How to resolve the impasse and pass all three bills?
I suggest the solution lies in shortening the timespan of the big bill to 5 years, trimming (350x5)= $1.75 trillion, leaving a $1.75 trillion BBB bill within shouting distance of Manchin’s $1.5 trillion, with a compromise number reachable by negotiation on climate change and taxes to give Manchin and Sinema something to take credit for with their donors. Then Democrats unite to pass the bill by budget reconciliation majority vote in both houses, including the debt-ceiling bill to be passed as an addendum to the BBB bill, bypassing the Republican filibuster in the Senate. If such an addendum is somehow not possible, Senate Republicans with their filibuster are left pinned with the blame for the consequences of the debt-ceiling bill’s failure to pass. Chances are the Republicans will cave under the pressure and belatedly (and with their usual twisted logic) take credit for a political success in resolving a problem they themselves created by either scuttling their filibuster or offering 10 Republican Senate votes to overcome it. If they don’t cave, there remains a Plan B in which Manchin and Sinema, flush with voter approval for cutting the BBB bill down to “fiscally responsible” size, approve an overdue modification of the filibuster rules, allowing the debt ceiling to be raised by majority vote in which Manchin and Sinema participate, along with VP Kamala Harris taking credit for casting the deciding vote. Under either of these scenarios.
Manchin and, presumably Sinema, take credit for a fiscal-responsibility win on their number and avoid voter ire with their respective voters for whom the bill is popular while negotiating somewhat more favorable terms for their donors.
Biden and Democrats take credit for 5 years’ worth of popular BBB infrastructure and bipartisan infrastructure programs while avoiding voter ire for having avoided the failure to pass a critical bill popular with not only their base but also with a fair number of Republican voters. Biden can extend both bills if re-elected, and if not pin the blame on Republicans for terminating these popular programs, or force them to administer programs they dislike.
Republicans, as I have said, will probably take credit for overcoming a problem of their own making by passing the debt-ceiling bill. They will, however, have to suffer their voters’ ire for failing to stop the BBB bill with its tax increase on their donors, the anti-fossil-fuel climate change provisions, and to stop the Democrats from passing their “socialist, etc” BBB “caring infrastructure spending bill. To add insult to injury, if they win back the presidency in 2024, they will be faced with either having to administer at least 2 years (’25 and ’26) of programs they have derided as “socialist,” or alternatively be forced to kill social safety net programs and tax increases on their donors, by then popular with a majority of the electorate, thus exposing the hypocrisy of their claim to be the party of the people.
The 10-year timeframe on the BBB bill was either a political blunder, if Biden and the Democrats stick to it, or an act of political genius if they proposed it as a bargaining chip half of which to be thrown in for a 5-year timeframe at the last minute to save the bill.
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